This past Sunday a group from the church and I headed to Cambridge Common where Rev. Jed Mannis and the staff of Outdoor Church host weekly communion services for the homeless.

We’d made about 90 sandwiches for distribution among the burgeoning homeless population, a small effort amid a growing crisis. A higher-than-usual number of teens from the suburbs are on the streets at the moment. Many may head home come October, when the weather turns cooler, but for the time being they find themselves vulnerable to malnutrition and other physical and mental abuses.

Not one of these young homeless folks attended worship and only two older, chronically homeless, individuals joined in. One, an elderly man, read the scripture from Matthew about Jesus feeding the 5,000. I felt awkward given the topic.

Shortly after the service a couple of folks materialized from the shady spots on the Common and approached the mobile altar. It’s a trolley beneath which are kept bags of sandwiches, socks, and hygiene kits. A woman wearing a bright pink dress and a cast around her wrist politely asked for a few sandwiches for her friends who were tending to a man who couldn’t stand.

As she looked us suburban church folks over, she told K (one of our group) that she looked familiar. “You do too,” K responded. She asked for the homeless woman’s name. In an instant, recognition dawned on their faces and grace exploded onto the scene as they walked toward each other with open arms. They embraced. They had been childhood friends in the same neighborhood.

In that moment I realized how much more we’d brought than our seemingly insignificant offering of sandwiches. We placed ourselves in a position to see and recognize our homeless neighbors, folks who are so often overlooked and despised even by those who toss a coin at them.

I remembered an editor I’d worked with here in Boston who demonstrated how he stepped over the homeless. His overstuffed belly threw him off balance. I thought of Congress mired in rancorous debate about the debt ceiling, one sticking point being funding for programs that serve the most vulnerable in society.

But there we were on a sunny Sunday afternoon, meeting our homeless sisters and brothers face to face, sharing the Eucharist, and handing out sandwiches soft enough for loose teeth to sink into. More than this we offered recognition made all the more powerful by an embrace and the merging of stories across the divides of time and privilege.